. Recovering the initial state of an infinitedimensional system using observers. Automatica, Elsevier, 2010, 46 (10) Abstract: Let A be the generator of a strongly continuous semigroup T on the Hilbert space X, and let C be a linear operator from D(A) to another Hilbert space Y (possibly unbounded with respect to X, not necessarily admissible). We consider the problem of estimating the initial state z 0 ∈ D(A) (with respect to the norm of X) from the output function y(t) = CT t z 0 , given for all t in a bounded interval [0, τ ]. We introduce the concepts of estimatability and backward estimatability for (A, C) (in a more general way than currently available in the literature), we introduce forward and backward observers, and we provide an iterative algorithm for estimating z 0 from y. This algorithm generalizes various algorithms proposed recently for specific classes of systems and it is an attractive alternative to methods based on inverting the Gramian. Our results lead also to a very general formulation of Russell's principle, i.e., estimatability and backward estimatability imply exact observability. This general formulation of the principle does not require T to be invertible. We illustrate our estimation algorithms on systems described by wave and Schrödinger equations, and we provide results from numerical simulations.

Let A be a possibly unbounded skew-adjoint operator on the Hilbert space X with compact resolvent. Let C be a bounded operator from D(A) to another Hilbert space Y. We consider the system governed by the state equationż(t)=Az(t) with the output y(t)=Cz(t). We characterize the exact observability of this system only in terms of C and of the spectral elements of the operator A. The starting point in the proof of this result is a Hautus-type test, recently obtained in Burq and Zworski (J. Amer. Soc. 17 (2004) 443-471) and Miller (J. Funct. Anal. 218 (2) (2005) 425-444). We then apply this result to various systems governed by partial differential equations with observation on the boundary of the domain. The Schrödinger equation, the Bernoulli-Euler plate equation and the wave equation in a square are considered. For the plate and Schrödinger equations, the main novelty brought in by our results is that we prove the exact boundary observability for an arbitrarily small observed part of the boundary. This is done by combining our spectral observability test to a theorem of Beurling on nonharmonic Fourier series and to a new number theoretic result on shifted squares.

Abstract.We consider the approximation of a class of exponentially stable infinite dimensional linear systems modelling the damped vibrations of one dimensional vibrating systems or of square plates. It is by now well known that the approximating systems obtained by usual finite element or finite difference are not, in general, uniformly stable with respect to the discretization parameter. Our main result shows that, by adding a suitable numerical viscosity term in the numerical scheme, our approximations are uniformly exponentially stable. This result is then applied to obtain strongly convergent approximations of the solutions of the algebraic Riccati equations associated to an LQR optimal control problem. We next give an application to a non-homogeneous string equation. Finally we apply similar techniques for approximating the equations of a damped square plate.Mathematics Subject Classification. 93D15, 65M60, 65M12.